Hotline to Murder Read online

  As he put down the receiver, Tony realized that his shirt was soaked. He glanced at the clock. It was almost ten. He had been on the call for two hours. He said, “I’m not sure I convinced him.”

  “You did the best you could,” Shahla said. “That’s all you can do.”

  “To be honest, if I were in his shoes, I would probably want to end it too.”

  “That’s the hardest call you’ll ever get on the Hotline. The suicide calls I’ve had are like, ‘I’m going to kill myself on the anniversary of my father’s death.’ ‘Oh, when is that?’ ‘Next February.’ Okay, that’s six months away. So I figure I’m safe.”

  They chuckled, which reduced the tension that had been present in the room for so long, like a compressed spring.

  “I have to go to the restroom—badly,” Tony said. “I’ve had to go for an hour.”

  “That’s one thing I forgot to tell you,” Shahla said. “Down the hall to the right. The key is hanging by the door. While you’re gone, I’ll fill out your evaluation form.”

  “Evaluation form?” He should have known there would be an evaluation form. “I hope I passed.”

  “Oh you did. With flying colors.”

  ***

  Tony parked his car in one of the two carport stalls allotted to his townhouse and noted that Josh’s car occupied the other one. He had hoped Josh would be out. It was too much to hope for that Josh would be asleep at this hour. He didn’t feel like talking to his roommate—housemate—he had to quit thinking like a college boy. After all, he had been out of college for almost ten years.

  He opened the wooden gate leading to his small brick patio. The sliding glass door to the house was open. He slid open the screen door. As he entered the house, he saw light emanating from the living room and heard the sound of the television set. Blaring. Explosive. Bang bang bang. Not a good sign. On the other hand, if Josh was fully involved in one of the ultra-violent movies he loved, maybe Tony could whoosh past him and race up the stairs without being detained.

  “Hey, Noodles. Where you going so fast? I want to hear about your evening.”

  Caught. And “Noodles.” How Tony hated that nickname. But this wasn’t the time to lecture Josh for the thousandth time about it. Josh lay fully reclined on the reclining chair, facing the big-screen TV, which was the only thing in the living room that belonged to him. He held a can of beer in his hand. A cooler sat beside the chair to prevent him from, heaven forbid, actually having to walk into the kitchen to get more beer. Empty cans littered Tony’s carpet, undoubtedly dripping beer into it.

  “I can’t talk with that thing on,” Tony shouted, over more explosions. He headed for the stairs.

  Josh picked up the remote, aimed it at the TV like a gun, and muted the sound. “There. I don’t want to hurt your sensitive ears. Here, have a brewski.”

  He picked a can out of the cooler and tossed it to Tony, oblivious to the fact that it was wet from melted ice. As Tony caught it, cold water spattered his face, arms, T-shirt, and jeans.

  “So, how did things go during your first night on the Hotstuff Line?”

  That wasn’t a question Tony could even begin to answer, given his current state of mind. He was still thinking about the suicide call. He popped open the can and took a long swallow. The cold bite of the liquid felt good sliding down his throat. Maybe this was what he needed.

  “What’s the matter? Some pussy got your tongue? Talk to Uncle Josh. Okay, let’s start at the beginning. I believe, back in the days when you were actually speaking to me, you said you would find out where the Hotline office is for the first time tonight. So, where is it? And sit down, for God’s sake. Don’t look like you’re about to fly off and execute some noble deed.”

  Josh flipped back his too long, but already thinning, red hair and folded his hands on his ample belly, while precariously balancing his beer can on said belly.

  Tony sat down on the sofa underneath the living room windows. He took another long swallow. He had to talk to Josh sooner or later because Josh never let go. But it hadn’t occurred to him that he was going to have trouble with this question. “The location is confidential.”

  “The location is confidential.” Josh mimicked him, but with a voice of exaggerated piety. “So this is how you treat your uncle Josh, after all the years we’ve known each other, after all we’ve been through together. After all the times I saved your worthless ass in college when you were about to flunk a course. After all the girls I fixed you up with. This is how it ends. ‘The location is confidential.’”

  “Can the damned dramatics, Josh. I’m not going to tell you, okay? I signed a statement, and I’m not going to risk getting fired. I’ll tell you anything else.”

  “I didn’t know you could get fired from a volunteer job. But Josh has a big heart, and I’ll let it pass. Even though it’s breaking. And let me risk another question, even if it means another bruise on my ego. You told me you were going to have a mentor tonight. Tell me about your mentor.”

  Tony said, “Yes, I did have a mentor. She was very good.”

  “Jesus, you sound like a first-grade reader. What was her name?”

  “Uh, Sally,” Tony said, using Shahla’s Hotline alias. Among his other faults, Josh was a bigot.

  “And is this Sally a babe?”

  The last thing Tony was going to do was to admit to Josh that she was a babe. He said, “She’s a teenager. She’s seventeen.”

  “So, is there a statute of limitations on babedom? Today’s teenyboppers are hot. I’ll bet she was wearing low-cut jeans and a top that was barely there. And a thong. Did you happen to notice when she bent over? Or does your new-found sanctity prevent you from peeking?”

  Josh was uncomfortably close to the truth. To head him off, Tony said, “I took several calls. One was from a guy who was talking about blowing his brains out.”

  “Holy shit.” Josh’s blue eyes widened, and he looked at Tony with what might be respect. “Did he have a piece?”

  “He said he did.”

  “What kind?”

  “Our discussion didn’t go into that kind of detail. I got him to take it into another room.”

  “So, did you convince him that life was worth living?”

  Tony hesitated. That was the question he had been asking himself all the way home. “I…I’m not sure.”

  “You mean, at this very moment he might be lying on the floor with his fucking brains scattered all over the room?”

  A gruesome picture flashed into Tony’s head. He said, slowly, “At this very moment he might be lying on the floor with his fucking brains scattered all over the room.” He couldn’t look at Josh. He knew Josh was staring at him, with the freckles covering his face changing color, as they did when he felt emotion.

  “Noodles, you need another beer.”

  Josh tossed this one across his body, and it spattered Tony and the sofa with cold water. Beer was Josh’s answer to all the world’s problems. Maybe Josh was right. By the time he went to bed, Tony had drunk at least a six-pack.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was Friday evening, August 30, two weeks after his first mentoring session. Tony walked into the building where the Hotline was located. Once again he smelled the odor he had come to associate with it. Perhaps it was some sort of cleaning compound.

  Instead of riding the elevator, he went up the stairs, taking them two at a time, all the way to the third floor. He was glad there was nobody at the top to see him puffing—to see how out of shape he was.

  He had also taken the stairs at his second and third Hotline sessions with a mentor, eschewing the elevator. Why? He could barely admit it to himself, but the reason apparently had to do with the fact that he wanted to get into better shape, lose those extra pounds that pushed his belt out. Why? It was ridiculous to think that he would do something he had never done in his life, at least for a woman—any woman, let alone for a seventeen-year-old. Someone who was legally jailbait.

  He had not seen Shahla
since the first session. His mentors for the other two sessions had also been teenagers, a boy and a girl, and they had been good, but they had made no lasting impression on him. Now he was on his own, an experienced listener. As he walked to the office, he wondered whether there would be anyone else on the lines tonight, or whether he would be alone. He barely dared hope that Shahla would be here, and he knew the odds were long against it. She had not been signed up on the calendar the last time he had looked, several days before.

  Tony tried the handle of the brown door. It was locked. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to seven. Perhaps there was no listener on the four-to-seven shift. Sometimes that happened with a volunteer organization. Fortunately, he had learned the combination to the lockbox on the door. He entered it and pulled off the cover, looking for the key inside. Except that the key wasn’t there. What was going on?

  He was at a loss, a feeling he was unfamiliar with. What should he do? Could there be somebody in the office behind the locked door? He had already stored the office phone numbers in his cell phone. He took out the phone and called the administrative office number. No answer. He tried the Hotline number. No answer.

  Maybe this was his way out. He had made a good-faith effort to work his shift. If the Hotline was so disorganized that he couldn’t even get in, it wasn’t his fault. Looking back over the last few weeks, he had done everything he set out to do. He had taken the Hotline training class and passed. He had survived three mentoring sessions and received good marks. He had shown empathy. In fact, he had learned all the skills that Mona, his boss at his real job, had wanted him to learn, when she had suggested that he volunteer for the Hotline. And although he had agreed to work at least three shifts a month for a year, if the Hotline staff members didn’t keep their part of the bargain, why was he obligated to keep his?

  But back to the present. There was a slight chance a listener was inside, on another call. If so, she—or he, would presumably be coming out in a few minutes—unless she was on a long call. Decision time. Tony decided to wait until five minutes after seven.

  He nervously paced up and down the corridor, wondering when a guard might come by and ask him what he was doing here. None did. At three minutes after seven, he tried the Hotline number on his cell phone again. No answer. He left.

  ***

  Tony went into the third bedroom on the second floor of his townhouse, the one he used as a home office, and fired up his computer. He slept in one of the other bedrooms. Josh occupied the second. Tony decided to check his e-mail. He had an e-mail address at work, of course, but he reserved his home e-mail for his personal life. He could also surf the Internet a little, find out what the stock market did today, visit an adult chat room. After all, he had no girlfriend at the moment.

  His spam filter captured a lot of the junk, but some still got through. There was the usual pleading letter from a high-ranking nobody in Nigeria offering him millions of dollars if he would just share his bank account number. He deleted the letter without reading it. After the first few dozen, they all sounded the same.

  An e-mail message from the Hotline caught his eye. He clicked on it immediately, partly because he was feeling guilty for skipping his shift, even though it wasn’t his fault. It was from Nancy, the Executive Director, addressed to all listeners. He scanned the note in mounting horror and then went back and read it carefully.

  It said, in part, “As you probably know by now, one of our listeners, Joy Wiggins, was murdered last night behind the building in which the Hotline office is located, after she worked the 7 to 10 p.m. shift.” It went on to express the deep shock and sorrow of the Hotline staff and to say that the Hotline would be closed until further notice.

  Tony violently shoved his rollered chair away from the computer with his feet, as if the mouse had burned his hand. He stared at the screen from four feet away, hoping the words would read differently from there, but they didn’t. Joy had been a facilitator for the Saturday class that was held in his townhouse. She was one of the girls and boys who had swum in his pool—and the one he remembered most distinctly.

  He continued to stare at the computer screen, fighting the idea that a beautiful girl like Joy was dead. It must be a mistake. He remembered seeing her laugh, he remembered her bikini-clad body, and he remembered her critiquing one of the role-play calls he had made during that class, with wisdom beyond her years. She had given him a good suggestion about using silence during calls.

  She had been killed almost twenty-four hours ago. Why hadn’t he heard about it before now? Tony went back over his day. He had rushed out of the house that morning, barely taking time to drink a glass of orange juice and eat a piece of toast. He had driven seventy-five miles to a little burg east of Los Angeles and had spoken at a meeting of a women’s club. On the way there, he had listened to a CD on salesmanship—another one of Mona’s ideas. He hadn’t listened to the news on his car radio.

  He had spoken to the women about what his company, Bodyalternatives.net, could offer them. Bodyalternatives.net was a new type of company—one that was based on the Internet. Its website, which was getting over a million hits a month, with the number rapidly increasing, featured help for people who had some sort of problem with their bodies—or who were just plain dissatisfied with them. Most of the company’s income came from plastic surgeons and other healthcare professionals who advertised on the site.

  Tony’s job, as Manager of Marketing, was to make healthcare contacts, sell advertising space on the site, and also to reach out to potential clients. That is what he had been doing by giving a speech to the women’s club. He had used his newfound listening skills to good advantage, had not judged his audience, and had shown empathy when answering questions. For example, he had not laughed when a woman complained about the crow’s-feet beside her eyes that nobody else could see. Mona, who was president of Bodyalternatives.net, would be pleased. He intended to emphasize the good things he had done in his call report.

  Tony had made several other calls during the day, but he had always listened to the tapes when he was in his car. He had grabbed a quick dinner in a fast-food restaurant and gone directly to the Hotline, without going to the office or coming home. That’s why he had been out of the loop.

  He rolled his chair back to the computer to look for news reports. They weren’t difficult to find. The story had a sensational aspect, and it had been picked up by all the news services. The first thing he read was that Joy’s body had been discovered in a pocket park behind the mall, cut and bruised, almost naked. Some items of her clothing had been lying nearby.

  When Joy hadn’t returned home last night, her parents had driven to the mall. They had found her car parked in the lot behind it. Listeners on the seven-to-ten shift were supposed to call the guard when they left and could request an escort out of the building. They exited by the back door because the front door was locked at night. On the three evenings Tony had worked, he had acted as the escort. Actually, the time he had worked with the boy, they had escorted each other.

  Joy’s parents had called the police when they found the car, but not Joy. A search had turned up her body within an hour. Tony tried to picture how devastated Joy’s parents must be. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t put himself in their place. And he didn’t want to. He would never have children.

  There was more information. The police had talked to the building guard. The guard claimed he had escorted Joy out to her car and seen her get into it. But he had not seen her drive away. She was an honor student and a member of the Bonita Beach High School volleyball team, one of the best high school teams in the country. Among other volunteer activities, she worked at the Central Hotline, the news reports said.

  Who would do such a thing? There were a lot of weirdoes out there—stalkers, rapists. The murderer must have been lying in wait for Joy. Someone who knew where the Hotline was located? Listeners were supposed to keep its location secret, but there were so many of them. Word must leak out—to family, friends.
And from there, to whom?

  A noise downstairs told Tony that Josh had arrived home from his job. He worked in the television industry, which allowed him to start late in the morning. Of course, he got home late, also, but that was fine with him because he didn’t like to go to bed. Tony could follow Josh’s progress in his head. First he would open the refrigerator and take out a can of beer. Then he would scan his mail, neatly separated for him by Tony. After that, he would come upstairs to change his clothes. A clump clump clump told Tony that Josh was right on schedule.

  Tony was prepared when Josh poked his head into the doorway and said, “Tony, baby, I’m awfully sorry about the girl. I found out about it when I got to the station. We had a ton of people covering it. I meant to call you on your cell phone, but I got tied up.”

  “That’s okay,” Tony said. Josh was always meaning to do things he never got around to doing. Actually, Tony was glad he hadn’t heard about Joy until tonight. It would have completely ruined his day. “I suppose there isn’t anything new that’s not on here.” He motioned toward the computer screen.

  “Not much. Autopsy pending. My guess is that she was raped.”

  “Is that confirmed?”

  “Not yet, but why the hell would a guy drag her into the bushes and tear her clothes off if he wasn’t going to rape her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you know her? She was a real babe. We got a picture of her from her parents.”

  “I knew her slightly.” Tony wasn’t going to tell Josh that she had been here at the townhouse, swimming in the pool. Josh would complain that Tony had excluded him. That’s exactly what Tony had done, of course, making sure that Josh was out of town on the weekend he had volunteered to hold the class here.

  “Do you know what she was wearing?” Josh asked, as if he were revealing a scandal. “Short shorts, skimpy top. No underwear. If a girl’s dressed like that, she’s asking for it.”

  “It was a warm night. And maybe the killer took her underwear with him. Maybe he has an underwear fetish.” Tony was heating up. “Where do you get off, anyway, saying that she was asking for it? That’s antediluvian thinking, Josh.”